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nnyI'm never quite sure where I stand on the family tree issue. I'm currently watching snippets of Stephen Fry in Vienna, tracing his great grandparents and being moved to tears, and I just... can't quite imagine having so extreme a reaction.
I suppose it depends to a very great extent on how close the familial ties are with your relatives. I barely even know how many cousins I have, let alone what my great grandparents were up to. We're not a particularly close family, which is somewhat pathetic when you consider that most of my family is in the vicinity of Kent - we barely manage to keep up with the ones that live in Southampton, where I'm from. I should, though - my granddad is an extraordinary man, friends with astronauts, owner of what was once the only sun telescope not owned by NASA, builder of camera obscurers for little museums in places like Middle Wallop. He has a camera obscurer in his attic, too, a hole he knocked through the roof and a huge metal construction poking out, swathed in bin bags presumably to keep the rain out. There's another skylight for a telescope, too, which pokes out of the room on the second floor that's filled entirely with fossils. And for all that he's obsessed with mashed potato, gravy, sausages and Grand Prix, he manages to still be coherent and eloquent on the subject of Suetonius.
I don't think, though, that I will ever know him well. I don't have the time to visit, that often, and when I do he's usually busy with the television, and I'm speaking to my grandmother, who belongs to Southampton's historical society and was, last time I was there, describing where T.E. Lawrence once lived in between cooking dinner, berating granddad, and asking about how life in Cardiff was going. I'm almost embarrassed that they're so interested in me, when I have nowhere near as interesting things to talk about as they do.
And that was an enormous tangent, I'm sorry. What I meant to go onto was family trees, and genealogy, and my conflicting views on the subject.
See, I can see that it's very interesting, and I can see that it's something that could be important - it's good to know where you come from even if, like me, there is not a sniff of diversity. I think my great grandfather on one side may well have been Irish, but that's pretty much it as far as non-English goes. Not that I'd know, as has been previously mentioned. Of course it gets complicated because my grandma was adopted, but still. I don't really know anything of where I came from, or what my heritage is, but I don't feel like it's important to me personally. Perhaps that's an irresponsible attitude in some way, or somehow unfaithful, but I really don't quite understand or share the obsession with forefathers. It's possible that I might feel some smidgeon of interest were I to find out that my however-many-greats uncle invented the first height-adjustable piano stool, but the fact that I might share the slightest of commonality at the genetic level with such a person doesn't really seem, to me, as though it has any affect on who I am.
See, I worry that so much time spent looking backwards might make a person forget that there are other directions. I think spending one's free time researching whether their family tree contains some long-forgotten branch of a little importance might well overtake their desire to be someone themselves. To make a point of developing into who they are rather than who their parents great-uncles might have been.
Then again, it could be I'm just bitter, 'cos as far as I know, no one I'm related to has ever done anything interesting.
I suppose it depends to a very great extent on how close the familial ties are with your relatives. I barely even know how many cousins I have, let alone what my great grandparents were up to. We're not a particularly close family, which is somewhat pathetic when you consider that most of my family is in the vicinity of Kent - we barely manage to keep up with the ones that live in Southampton, where I'm from. I should, though - my granddad is an extraordinary man, friends with astronauts, owner of what was once the only sun telescope not owned by NASA, builder of camera obscurers for little museums in places like Middle Wallop. He has a camera obscurer in his attic, too, a hole he knocked through the roof and a huge metal construction poking out, swathed in bin bags presumably to keep the rain out. There's another skylight for a telescope, too, which pokes out of the room on the second floor that's filled entirely with fossils. And for all that he's obsessed with mashed potato, gravy, sausages and Grand Prix, he manages to still be coherent and eloquent on the subject of Suetonius.
I don't think, though, that I will ever know him well. I don't have the time to visit, that often, and when I do he's usually busy with the television, and I'm speaking to my grandmother, who belongs to Southampton's historical society and was, last time I was there, describing where T.E. Lawrence once lived in between cooking dinner, berating granddad, and asking about how life in Cardiff was going. I'm almost embarrassed that they're so interested in me, when I have nowhere near as interesting things to talk about as they do.
And that was an enormous tangent, I'm sorry. What I meant to go onto was family trees, and genealogy, and my conflicting views on the subject.
See, I can see that it's very interesting, and I can see that it's something that could be important - it's good to know where you come from even if, like me, there is not a sniff of diversity. I think my great grandfather on one side may well have been Irish, but that's pretty much it as far as non-English goes. Not that I'd know, as has been previously mentioned. Of course it gets complicated because my grandma was adopted, but still. I don't really know anything of where I came from, or what my heritage is, but I don't feel like it's important to me personally. Perhaps that's an irresponsible attitude in some way, or somehow unfaithful, but I really don't quite understand or share the obsession with forefathers. It's possible that I might feel some smidgeon of interest were I to find out that my however-many-greats uncle invented the first height-adjustable piano stool, but the fact that I might share the slightest of commonality at the genetic level with such a person doesn't really seem, to me, as though it has any affect on who I am.
See, I worry that so much time spent looking backwards might make a person forget that there are other directions. I think spending one's free time researching whether their family tree contains some long-forgotten branch of a little importance might well overtake their desire to be someone themselves. To make a point of developing into who they are rather than who their parents great-uncles might have been.
Then again, it could be I'm just bitter, 'cos as far as I know, no one I'm related to has ever done anything interesting.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 02:20 pm (UTC)Then again, it could be I'm just bitter, 'cos as far as I know, no one I'm related to has ever done anything interesting.
I'm rather of the opinion that I'm going to be the one who does something interesting in my family. It's a splendid position to take. I thoroughly recommend it.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 02:29 pm (UTC)it seems to suggest that they have to harp on about the fantastic genes of their gene pool because they have nothing else going for them.
See, that was the part I was far too polite to state as an opinion, you see. My immediate family are of no interest to anyone who doesn't know us, but they're all ridiculously amusing and loud and cheerful, and provide excellent anecdotes that'll no doubt be used in the best-selling novels I'll someday write. And then they'll all make an enormous deal of being related to me, and I shall cement by hypocrisy by really not minding, all that much.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 02:34 pm (UTC)I was far too polite to state as an opinion
*facepalm* Ah, yes. Manners. I seem to have missed out on that particular virtue.
Of course, it has to be said that part of the reason I don't buy much into this "my ancestors did amazing things therefore I am evidently amazing too" thing is that My Beloved Father keeps using it as his crutch for the "you get your 'talent' from me" nature-pwns-nurture wind-up speeches. Mm, time to end that particular overshare before it dissolves into vitriol.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 02:42 pm (UTC)*facepalm* Ah, yes. Manners. I seem to have missed out on that particular virtue.
Believe me, I jest. I do wish I were more forthright, sometimes, but instead I dream of having a talent for incisive remarks and terribly polite insults, a la Peter Wimsey, and continue to be Awfully Nice. *grins*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 04:27 pm (UTC)The enchantment is in the puzzle and in the stories. For example, in the small, insular town my mother's great-great-grandparents lived in, I can look at the 1881 census and see that while the two youngest kids were still at home, two of the others were working as farmhands and a third was already married. It's fun to imagine what life must have been like, and there's a thrill of discovery when you learn a new fact.
I don't really look at it as finding out where I came from so much as assembling peoples' lives in paper, and then making them live in my head. I like the stories of people. That's the kind of history I've always liked, rather than troop movements and who reigned when. Just...people, living their lives.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-26 11:46 am (UTC)¬_¬ I am deadly interesting
no subject
Date: 2006-01-26 11:31 pm (UTC)Oh, I too dream of having the talent for doing something more witty than either foaming at the mouth or bluntly swearing at people. Le sigh.